TACKLE—CURIOUS METHODS OF FISHING FOR THE SARGUS BY
DRESSING IN A SHE-GOAT’S SKIN—FOR THE SKATE BY DANCING
AND MUSIC—FOR THE SILURUS BY A YOKE OF OXEN—FOR THE
EEL WITH THE GUTS OF A SHEEP. WHAT WAS THE SILURUS? WILD
THEORIES AS TO THE PROPAGATION OF EELS
“Unseen, Eurotas, southward steal,
Unknown, Alpheus, westward glide,
You never heard the ringing _Reel_,
The music of the waterside.”
(A. LANG.)
The tackle, implements, and some curious modes of fishing apparently
peculiar to, or handed down to us only from, Greek and Roman sources
call for consideration and comment.
Nets, we have seen, were of all sorts and kinds in shape, make, and
size. Their number and nature as disclosed by Julius Pollux, Plutarch,
and Ælian indicate that the art of netting was well nigh perfected.
Oppian, after enumerating many varieties and telling how the enormous
“Nets, like a city, to the floods descend
And bulwarks, gates, and noble streets extend,”
excuses himself from further amplification:
“A thousand names a fisher might rehearse
Of nets, intractable in smoother verse.”[559]
Confirmation comes from Alciphron’s[560] statement that scarce a fathom
of the harbour of Ephesus but held a Net: on one occasion the sole
haul, after much moiling and toiling, was the putrid carcase of a
camel![561]
What and whence the Rod? It was certainly short: only from 6 to 8 feet
(Ælian, XV. 1)—a length which is in the main confirmed, if assuming
the height of some of the fishermen represented on vases, etc., in
the Greek and Roman rooms of the British Museum to be as high as six
feet, you then measure the rod. On the other hand, the sitting youth in
the Agathemeros relief (_Brit. Mus. Cat. Sculpture_, I. 317, No. 648)
measures 24 cm., the Rod 8 cm., the line 15 cm.[562]
As we do not possess any relic of the Homeric rod, the length of the
only one mentioned in either the _Iliad_ or the _Odyssey_ must be a
matter of conjecture, especially as this is styled περιμήκης, or “very
long” one.[563]
The ordinary Rods were made of cane, hence _Harundo_ and _Calamus_,
which was imported usually from Abaris in Lower Egypt, or of some light
elastic wood. For large and powerful fish, where something stronger
was required, Ælian tells us that _Tuncus Marinus_ and _Ferula_ were
preferred.
If the Rod were tapered, it was tapered probably by Nature not by art,
at least so the Agathemeros relief, all the pictures of Venus and Cupid
angling, and of many _Amorini_ from Herculaneum would suggest. The
question whether the Rods were jointed has been discussed in my chapter
on the _crescens harundo_ of Martial.
The line, ὁρμιά, or _Linea_, made from the strong bristly hairs of
animals (_seta_) but most generally of horse-hair,[564] of flax, of
_sparton_ out of the _genista_, perhaps of _byssus_, but never of
gut, was very finely twisted, as the epithet εὐπλόκαμος shows. It was
usually as long as the rod itself, although in the Agathemeros relief
we find it nearly double the length. The colours of the line were grey,
black, brown—sometimes red or purple. It was made tight to the top of
the Rod and not let down to the butt, or running.[565]
Plutarch prescribes that the hairs next to the hook should for
deception’s sake be taken from a _white_ horse, and adds advice, as
pertinent now as then, that there “should not be too many knots in the
line!”[566]
To the line was fastened the hook (_hamus_) which was of one or two
sharp barbs.[567] From Herculaneum,[568] Pompeii, and elsewhere have
been collected hooks which vary extremely in form, size, and method
of adjustment.[569] Although sometimes of bone, they are mostly
manufactured from iron or bronze. Cf. Oppian, III. 285: χαλκοῦ μὲν
σκληροῑο τετυγμένον ἠὲ σιδήρου.
It strikes us moderns as strange to have the epithet _hard_ applied to
bronze and not to iron, till we are informed that the ancient bronze
was made of tin and copper, not zinc and copper, as is our softer
alloy, and was so hard that, Pliny tells us, it could be worked to
represent the finest hair of a woman’s head.
The Pompeian hooks were almost exclusively adapted for sea fishing, and
are thus generally large in size, long in shank, and flattened at the
top to facilitate attachment to the line.
[Illustration: THE OLDEST MYCENÆAN HOOKS IN THE BRITISH MUSEUM.]
Plutarch’s statement that some hooks were straight, as distinct from
the usual recurved sort, may possibly be indicative of a survival of
the palæolithic gorge. Some of the Roman hooks are double-barbed, some
are fixed back to back like eel-hooks, and fastened to wire to prevent
erosion by the teeth. In the pursuit of large fish such as the _Amia_,
hooks of a serpentine curve are recommended, “as these great fish
manage to get loose from straight ones!”
To the hook was fastened the bait (_esca_), usually worms, flies, and
other insects. For large fish the bait was often cooked, because the
scent was believed to offer an additional attraction. By a clever
contrivance of small pieces of lead equally balanced and carefully
attached the lure was made to have the appearance of natural movement.
The Reel on a fishing Rod was certainly unknown to Ancient Nations.
Wilkinson figures something resembling a Reel being employed when
spearing _hippopotami_.[570]
The _Amia_ (mentioned by Pliny, IX. 19, alone of all the Latin writers)
is according to Oppian[571] a little smaller than the tunny, which
reaches large proportions. Later,[572] he recounts how the _Amia_
furnishes sad labour and trouble to the fishermen from his habit, the
moment he feels the hook, of instantly rising, of swallowing more line,
and then of biting through the middle, “or even the topmost hairs of
it.”
But successful cunning to avoid capture was no monopoly of the _Amia_.
Ovid, Oppian, Pliny, Plutarch, Ælian, recount numerous devices which
certain fish employ to nullify net or hook. I subjoin three of the
chief tricks used to defeat the _hamus_.
The _Mugil_, whose greed is only saved by its guile, despite his
foreknowledge of danger has madly grabbed the bait, but keeps thrashing
it with his tail, till at last he shakes it free of the hook. “At mugil
cauda pendentem everberat escam Excussamque legit.”[573]
The _Anthias_ on the first prick of the hook turns over on to his back
and quickly severs the line with his dorsal fin, or spike, “of the
shape and keenness of a knife.”[574]
The _Scolopendra_, according to Aristotle, “after swallowing the hook,
turns itself inside out until it ejects it, and then it again turns
itself outside in,” and (in Pliny’s words) vomits up everything inside
him till he has ejected the hook, and “deinde resorbet!”[575]
Lines with floating corks and lead attached close to the hooks, partly
to facilitate the throwing of the line, and partly, combined with a
sliding cork, to regulate the position of the bait, were in regular
use. Ground fishing, when the lure is leaded and thrown with or without
rod, was well known and widely exercised.
Pastes and scents were also employed, either like myrrh dissolved in
wine to intoxicate (see the accompanying drawing, which is, I believe,
unique),[576] or, like the cyclamen, or sowbread, to poison the
fish.[577] From Oppian’s description of the workings of the poison, IV.
658 ff., we take the lines:
“Soon as the deadly Cyclamen invades
The ill-starred fishes in their deep-sunk glades,
... the slowly working bane
Creeps o’er each sense and poisons every vein,
Then pours concentred mischief on the brain,
Some drugged, like men o’ercome with recent wine,
Reel to and fro, and stagger thro’ the brine;
Some in quick circlets whirl: some ’gainst the rocks
Dash, and are stunned by repercussive shocks;
Some with quenched orbs, or filmy eyeballs thick,
Rush on the nets and in the meshes stick,
In coma steeped their fins more feebly ply,
Some in titanic spasms gasp and die.
Soon as the plashings cease and stillness reigns,
The jocund crew collect, and count their gains.”
In the simile—inevitable in Oppian—which ends the passage our author
may indicate, though he does not name, the Germanic tribes (for over
Rome in his day as over Europe in ours hung the barbarian menace) when
he condemned the abhorred habit practised by the enemy of poisoning the
springs and wells:
... “the brave defendants sink
In thirsty pangs, or perish if they drink.”
In the number of methods, in the variety of devices, the fishermen of
Oppian and Ælian are not behind their modern successors; it is indeed
the reverse of
“John P. Robinson he
Guessed they did not know everything down in Judee.”[578]
[Illustration: ANGLING WITH WINE.
From a Mosaic at Melos. See n. 4, p. 239.]
We moderns are, in fact, merely the heirs to a piscatorial estate,
which by scientific improvement or intensive culture we have rendered
more serviceable and better adapted to the requirements of fish more
harried, and consequently more highly educated.
The old devices, the old recipes were never entirely lost.[579] They
continued to be handed down through the Middle Ages, and may be
found in most of the collections of household recipes, such as those
of Baptista Porta, Conrad Heresbach, and others. They naturally in
the course of some thousand years got rather split up, or fell into
abeyance; it was not, in fact, till the seventeenth century that fairly
full collections of them began to reappear.
But except just to mention “tickling,” an ancient device in both Oppian
and Ælian, we have room here only for four methods, all very quaint,
either unknown or uncommon among twentieth-century fishers.
The _first_, that by which the goat-herd annexes the _Sargus_,
according to Oppian.[580]
In hot weather it was, and still is, in Sicily the wont of the
goat-herds to drive their flocks to some cool shallow of the sea. “Once
upon a time” one of them noticed that the _sargi_ came round the goats
in vast shoals. The reason for this—whether grasped in a moment by one
great brain, or evolved by two or three generations of speculating
herdsmen—was discovered to be the attraction of the male _sargus_ by
the smell of the female goat.
So the reasoning goat-herd slays his nanny, puts himself inside her
skin, and to perfect, I presume, the resemblance of the deception,
“adjusts on his brows the horns!” Then he gently glides into the
shallow, “scatters the food full shower” among the _sargi_ hot on their
amorous mission and, well! for the number that were slain by “The
Sturdy Rod his latent Hand extends” I refer you to the fourth book of
the _Halieutica_!
Ichthyologists declare that the male _sargus_ is very uxorious, and has
at least one hundred wives always in close-herded attendance on him.
As the words “unhappy lovers” indicate that the _sargi_ were present
not a few, these multiplied by one hundred must have yielded quite a
decent creel.[581]
The _second_ method owes its success to the love for music and
for watching the dance, which Aristotle and Ælian assert to be
characteristic of several fishes, but especially of the skate. The
recipe of this method, far pleasanter, certainly less odoriferous than
that of the last, demands 1 Boat, 1 Violin, 1 big Net, 2 Men, one of
whom fiddles, while the other dances as he unwinds the net. Attracted
to the spot, and, like Wagner-devotees, so entirely absorbed by the
melody as to be unconscious of all else, the skates fall easy and
numerous victims to the slowly drawn net.
This method seems “the limit.” It certainly trenched on even Badham’s
credulity. He states that he would not have cited this statement of
Ælian’s, unless it had been “singularly countenanced and confirmed by
no less a person than the great French ichthyologist, Rondolet,” whose
mere name in this musical context must presumably carry conviction, for
(as is not unusual with Badham) no reference is given.[582]
The _third_ method, employed by the Mysians for capturing the _Silurus_
in big rivers like the Danube and the Volga, is set forth by Ælian
(XIV. 25) in words which describe with such charming _naïveté_ the
perfection of the Silurian palate, eye, and possibly nose, enabling
it to discriminate instantly between “the lungs of a wild” and other
“bull,”[583] that we may venture upon quoting the whole passage:
“An Istrian fisherman drives a pair of oxen near the river-bank, not,
however, for the purpose of ploughing.... If a pair of horses are at
hand, the fisherman makes use of horses; and with the yoke on his
shoulders, down he goes and takes his station at a spot which he thinks
will make a convenient seat for himself, and be a good place for sport.
He fastens one end of the fishing-rope, which is stout and capable
of standing a good tug, to the middle of the yoke, and supplies the
oxen, or the horses, as the case may be, with sufficient food, and the
animals take their fill.
“To the other end of the rope he fastens a strong and terribly sharp
hook, baited with the lungs of a wild bull; this he throws into the
water as a lure—a very sweet lure—to the Istrian _silurus_, having
previously fastened a piece of lead of sufficient size to the rope
above the place where the hook is bound on, to serve as a support for
the pull.[584]
“When the fish perceives the bait of bull’s-flesh, he immediately rushes
at the prey, and, meeting with that he so dearly loves, opens wide his
great jaws and greedily swallows the dreadful bait; then the glutton,
at first turning himself round with pleasure, soon finds that he has
been pierced unawares with the aforesaid hook, and being eager to
escape from the calamity shakes the rope with the greatest violence.
“The fisherman observes this, and is filled with delight; he jumps from
his seat, and, now in the character of a fisherman, now in that of
a ploughman, like an actor who changes his mask in a play, he urges
on his oxen or horses, and a mighty contest takes place between the
monster and the yoked animals; for the creature, foster-child of the
Ister, draws downward with all his might, while the yoked animals pull
the rope in an opposite direction. The fish can make no headway. Beaten
by the united efforts of the team, he gives in, and is hauled on to the
bank.”
_Siluri_, according to common report, have been caught weighing over
400 lbs. and of more than twelve feet in length.
There is good ground for us moderns patting ourselves on the back, when
we realise that owing to the many improvements effected in our tackle,
and not least in the Rod, an angler off Catalina has often landed a
heavier fish than a yoke of oxen on the banks of the Ister, _e.g._ Mr.
A. N. Howard (in 1916) caught the record Black Sea Bass in Californian
waters, weighing 493 lbs.
Even this big fellow is quite a dwarf beside the Tuna of 710 lbs. taken
in Canadian waters by Mr. Laurence Mitchell,[585] which still holds, I
believe, the record of the world as the very largest fish ever taken on
a rod.
I myself have seen a sword fish of over 300 lbs. killed on a rod off
Santa Catalina. When in 1909 out for Tarpon in Kingston Harbour,
Jamaica, I had the good luck to secure after a fight of two and a half
hours, and after being towed almost down to Port Royal and back, a
distance of some five miles, a shark weighing 116 lbs., with a rod only
8 foot long, with a light salmon line, with a No. 4 hook, and with a
bit of piano wire, _faute de mieux_, attached to prevent erosion.[586]
From the time of the earliest authors the identification of the
_Silurus_ has been a vexed question.
Aristotle writing of the _Glanis_, a large fresh-water fish (his
only account of actual fishing, it may be remembered, is a fight
with a _Glanis_),[587] attributes to it characteristics and habits,
which Pliny _totidem sententiis_, if not _verbis_, transfers to the
_Silurus_, although he thrice mentions the _Glanis_. Ælian, in addition
to XIV. 25, declares in XII. 14, that the _Glanis_ a species of, and
very like, the _Silurus_, while Athenæus treats them as separate fish.
As late as the time of Scaliger, the problem gave rise to discussion
which led to no elucidation of what fish exactly corresponds to the
classical _Silurus_. Perhaps the sentence of Albertus Magnus,[588]
“a river fish which was called by the Greeks _Glanis_, but by us
_Silurus_,” seemed, although only a conjectural compromise, as near as
we could get to the identity.
Agassiz, however, reluctant to accept Cuvier’s identification of the
_Glanis_ with the _Silurus glanis_, came to the conclusion (after
examining six specimens of a Siluroid new to Ichthyologists, which
he obtained from the Acheloüs in Western Greece) that from agreement
in the form of the anal fin, the position of the gall bladder, the
connected spawn, etc., they were the same as Aristotle’s _Glanis_.
To this Siluroid Agassiz gave the name _Glanis aristotelis_: it is,
perhaps, better known as _Parasilurus aristotelis_.[589]
If the _Silurus_ be the _Scheid_ of Germany, his strength, habits, and
ferocity, as set forth in our authors are indeed very credible. From
Aristotle we learn that this “river fish” is easy to hook (as we should
suspect from its rapacity, which has been tersely summarised in “pisces
pisci præda at huic omnes”), but from its huge powers and hard teeth
very hard to hold.
The passage in Pliny, IX. 75, which he extracts from
Aristotle[590]—“Silurus mas solus omnium edita custodit ova, sæpe et
quinquagenis diebus, ne absumantur ab aliis”—has by a wrong rendering
accorded to the male _Silurus_ the proud distinction of being the only
male fish that guards its eggs. This is absurd, for other instances,
_e.g. Chromis simonis_, exist.
Where fish, however, pay any regard whatever to their _ova_, it is
usually, but not always, on the father that the duty falls. “Omnium”
in Pliny is to be read not with “solus” but with “edita ova.” This
reading advances the quite different claim that the Silurus is the
only male that includes in its watch and ward not merely its own but
promiscuously also the eggs of other fish. Perhaps the same start of
surprise awaits him, on the pentecostal and last day of his vigil, as
that of the hen when she first beholds a mixed brood of chickens and
ducklings emerging from under her breast.
Pliny reveals some fabulous uses of the _Silurus_. In XXXII. 28, fresh
caught _Siluri_ are an excellent tonic for the voice. In 46, by the
smoke and scent of a burnt _Silurus_, especially one hailing from
Africa (!), the pangs of childbirth are said to be greatly eased. In
40, for curing “ignes sacros” or the malady of St. Anthony’s fire,
the application of the bellies of living frogs, or of ashes from a
_Silurus_, were two of the nostrums recommended.
The _fourth_ and last method, for the capture of Eels, given by
Ælian,[591] although almost certainly cribbed from Oppian,[592] but
with a local habitation and a name carefully thrown in to suggest
originality, reads much as follows:
The eeler from a high bank of the “river Eretaenus, where the eels are
the largest and by far the fattest of all eels,” lets down at a turn of
the stream some cubits’ length of the intestines of a sheep. An eel,
seizing a bit of it at the nether end, tries to drag the whole away,
on which the fisher applies the other end (which is fixed to a long
tubular reed serving the place of a fishing rod) to his mouth, and
blows into the sheep’s gut. This presently swells; the fish receiving
the air in his mouth swells too, and unable to extricate his teeth is
lugged out, adhering to the inflated intestines.[593]
“Gin these be joys of artful eeling, oh! gie me Essex Flats,” with
their “sniggling for eels with a needle,” or “banding“ for fish with
whitethorn hooks!
In addition to this pneumatic method of Ælian others were employed for
taking eels. Stirring up the mud, in which they were wont to lurk was
a common device; hence the proverb ἐγχέλεις θηρᾶσθαι, to fish in muddy
waters. Thus Aristophanes[594] makes the sausage seller, whom the Whigs
of Athens had hired to outbawl the demagogue Cleon, shout, “Yes, it is
with you as with the eel-catchers; when the lake is still, they do not
take anything, but if they stir up the mud, they do; so it is with you,
when you disturb the State.”[595]
Even at the risk of being likened to Mr. Bouncer of Oxford fame,
who in every answer of his Divinity paper dragged in his sole and
cuff-attached bit of Old Testament knowledge with “and here it may not
seem inappropriate to subjoin a list of the Kings of Israel and Judah,”
I venture some comments on the Eel.
The frequent allusions in our authors to the Eel, (A) as a sacred fish,
(B) as the delight of the epicure, and (C) as a propagator of its
species in a variety of surprisingly erroneous ways, must be my excuse.
(A) _It was held as a god_, or at least as a sacred creature, by the
Egyptians,[596] as sacred to Artemis in the spring of Arethusa,[597]
and semi-sacred by the Bœotians.[598]
Antiphanes[599] ridicules the Egyptians for the sacred honour paid to
the fish, wrongly termed by the Greeks the Eel. Contrasting the value
of the gods with the high prices paid for the fish at Athens he gibes;
“they say that the Egyptians are clever in that they rank the Eel equal
to a god, but in reality it is held in esteem and value far higher than
gods, for _them_ we can propitiate with a prayer or two, while to get
even a smell of an Eel at Athens we have to spend twelve _drachmæ_ or
more!” Anaxandrides’[600] makes a Greek say to an Egyptian:
“You count the Eel a mighty deity,
And we a mighty dainty!”
Juvenal in Satire XV. (written probably after his return from
semi-exile in Egypt) lashes with ridicule the compatriots of his butt
Crispinus. The enumeration of their animal and vegetable gods is a fine
specimen of dignified humour. By _piscem_ in line 7, may be indicated
the _Oxyrhynchus_, the _Lepidotus_, or the _Phagrus_, the so-called
Eel—three sacred fishes of the Nile.
“Illic æluros, hic piscem fluminis, illic
Oppida tota canem venerantur, nemo Dianam.”
(B) _As a delicacy_, the Eel by the Greeks was rated very high. But
the reverse held good at Rome. Unlike its cousin the _Muræna_ it gets
little commendation by the Latin comedians—Terence’s in _Adelphi_,
377-381, is the solitary exception I can recall—and by the gourmets.
Apicius deemed it worthy of but one recipe.[601]
“Vos anguillæ manet longæ cognata colubræ” (Juvenal, V. 103) is
often quoted as stamping the low position of the Eel at Rome, but in
reality, as the whole context bears out, this particular “cousin of the
snake” was condemned not because of its kinship, but because it was
_Cloaca_-bred and drain-fed.[602]
The passage in Menander’s,[603] _Drunkenness_ which makes one of the
characters declaim that, were he a god, he would never allow a loin of
beef to load his altars, unless an Eel were also sacrificed, testifies
to the preference for the Eel to meat. Numerous are the pæans of praise
rendered by Greek writers to the superlative excellence of the fish.
The Eel is dight “the King of fish”[604]; he, or rather she, was “the
white-skinned Nymph”[605]; was “chief of the fifty Virgins of Lake
Copaïs”[606]; was a very “Goddess,”
“Then there came
Those natives of the Lakes, the eels,
Bœotian goddesses, all clothed in beet,”[607]
(with which, or majoram, on beech leaves, Aristophanes[608] tells us
they were often served); and, the very last word in laudation, was “the
Helen of the Feast.”[609]
Whether this was applied because the fish was the personification of
all delicate dainties, as Helen was the fairest of all the fair, or
because every guest strove like Paris to supplant his neighbour and
keep her all to himself, the reader must choose. Athenæus certainly
leans to the latter view.[610]
Philetærus[611] would seem to have no doubt in identifying what is the
sting of death and what is the victory of the grave,
“For when you’re dead, you cannot then eat eels.”
To the sense of smell as well as that of taste the _Murænidæ_ appealed
strongly, to judge by the eulogy that their bodies when being cooked
exhaled an odour fragrant enough to restore the sense of smell in the
nose of a dead man! while, if boiled in fine brine, they “changed the
human nature into the divine!”[612]
The luxurious and lazy Sybarites, who felt they had broken their
bones if they but saw another digging, and suffered not a cock in the
whole country, lest he should mar their slumber, were so passionately
addicted to Eels that all persons catching or selling them were exempt
from taxes and tribute.[613]
(C) _The propagation of Eels_: This has given birth to more
theories—all of them till some twenty years ago quite erroneous—than
any other ichthyic question. From Aristotle downwards nearly every
zoologist, nearly every writer on fish, has advanced his view as to how
and whence eels are bred.[614]
Only a few of them, and they all divergent, can find space here.
Aristotle held that Eels had never been found with milt or roe, that
when opened they did not seem to possess generative organs, and
that apparently they came from the so-called entrails of the earth,
seemingly referring to certain worms formed spontaneously in mud and
the like.[615]
Oppian (I. 513 ff.)—
“Strange the formation of the eely race
That know no sex, yet love the close embrace.
Their folded lengths they round each other twine,
Twist amorous knots, and slimy bodies joyn;
Till the close strife brings off a frothy juice,
The seed that must the wiggling kind produce.
Regardless they their future offspring leave,
But porous sands the spumy drops receive.
That genial bed impregnates all the heap,
And little eelets soon begin to creep.”
Pliny, after making the assertion (taken, as usual, from Aristotle)
that among fish the females are larger, and often the more numerous,
goes on, an echo once more of “His Master’s Voice,” to deny to the Eel
sex, either masculine or feminine: according to him, Eels when they
had lived their day, rubbed themselves against the rocks, and their
scrapings came to life: “they have no other mode of procreation.”[616]
Von Helmont attributed the birth of Eels to the dews of May mornings!
other authors deduced their parentage from the hairs of horses! others
again from the gills of fish! while the great Izaak Walton insisted on
spontaneous generation![617]
To solve the insoluble, recourse was, as usual, had to the gods: thus
Jupiter and a white-armed goddess yclept Anguilla[618] (the Latin for
Eel) were accounted parents of the countless “cousins to the snake.”
Theory was piled upon theory, false conclusions were drawn from
falser data. Even as late as 1862 appeared an author, not one whit
less certain of the truth of his discovery based “on a series of
observations extending over sixty years,” or one whit less active in
asserting it, than any of his numerous predecessors.
In _The Origin of the Silver Eel_, Mr. D. Cairncross propounded the
following assertion: “The progenitor of the silver Eel is a small
beetle: of this I feel fully satisfied in my own mind, from a rigid
and extensive comparison of its structure and habits with those
of other insects.”[619] “The beetle in the act of parturition” is
represented on the frontispiece!
The fact that this beetle is evidently a dead one would not, as the
_Bibliotheca Piscatoria_ rather wickedly puts it, even if known to the
writer, cause him to alter his opinion one jot!
It was only in 1896—strange, indeed, that a problem which so many
keen intellects had attacked should remain unelucidated for over two
thousand years!—that the mode of reproduction and development of the
Eel was first surmised, and then for the most part ascertained by
Professor Grassi and Dr. Galandruccio. But not till 1904 were most of
the surmises of the Italian investigators placed beyond question, and
the mode of reproduction, etc., established beyond doubt by Johann
Schmidt of Copenhagen.
The now accepted view (stated shortly) is as follows: fresh-water
Eels approach maturity when about six years old, and then change
their colour from browny-yellow to silver, whence “Silver Eels.” In
this bridal attire and with eyes enlarged, they find their way from
the rivers to the sea, and far out into deep waters of the ocean. The
pace at which they travel on their way to the sea cannot be computed
exactly, but two marked Eels have been caught whose record was nineteen
kilometres in two days. Meek[620] states that neither the exact
locality nor the approximate depth of the spawning is as yet known, but
that there can be no doubt that the spawning region lies deep and far
out in the Atlantic beyond the Continental shelf.
_The Times_, Sept. 25, 1920, announces that Dr. J. Schmidt has just
discovered the spawning place of fresh-water Eels to be not far S.
of Bermuda, or about 27 deg. N. and 60 deg. W., much farther W. than
he anticipated. Of the many marvels of the ichthyic world this is,
perhaps, the greatest. It taxes, it transcends, our powers adequately
to conceive the hereditary instinct or gauge the enduring strength
which impels fish—as yet sexually undeveloped—of only moderate size
to traverse 3000 or 4000 miles of an ocean full of foes, and to seek,
especially to find, the only area which contains the requisite depth,
temperature, and currents favouring the procreation and the return home
of their minute but parentless progeny.
The conclusion is now clear that the Eels of Europe at any rate have
a spawning area in common; the two Italian doctors were wrong in
supposing that Eels spawned in the Mediterranean. In such ocean depths
certainly below, probably far below, the one hundred fathoms[621]
line the generative organs of the Eels develope, and in due though
protracted time the females spawn.[622]
Their eggs float for a time; the young, when hatched out, pass
through a metamorphosis and are known in one stage as _Leptocephalus
brevirostris_. This larval form, which is flat and transparent and has
a very small head, drifts with the ocean currents towards the coasts
of Europe, where it passes through a series of metamorphoses into the
Elver or young Eel, which in March and April swims up English rivers.
The fecundity of the Eel, were it not for the system of check and
countercheck devised by Nature, would in time become a danger; for the
ovary of a female thirty-two inches in length has been estimated to
contain no fewer than 10,700,000 eggs![623]
But however legitimate or illegitimate their methods may seem, all
praise should be rendered to our ancient anglers. Especially so, when
we call to mind that, as they possessed not running lines, reels,
gut, nor probably _landing_ nets, the playing of large fish must have
required more delicate manipulation and the landing presented far
greater difficulties than to us, armed as we are with all these and
many other appliances.
FOOTNOTES:
[559] _Trans._, by Diaper and Jones (London, 1722—see _supra_, p. 177),
which I usually employ. Cf. III. 84: μυρία δ’ αἰόλα τοῖα δολορραφέων
λίνα κόλπων. Fishing nets from Pompeii, even now almost entire, are to
be found in Italian Museums. The best times for hauling up the nets
were (according to Arist., _N. H._, VIII. 19) “just about sunrise and
sunset. Fishermen speak of these as ‘nick-of-time’ (ὡραῖοι) hauls.
The fact is that at these times fishes are particularly weak-sighted”
(D’Arcy Thompson, _Trs._). Pliny, IX. 23, practically copies Aristotle.
[560] Alciphr., _Epist._, 1. 17.
[561] A terra-cotta relief of the type known as “Median,” _c._ 460
B.C., in _Brit. Mus. Cat. of Terra-cottas_, No. B. 372, Pl. 20, shows a
fisherman holding two fishes, or a fish and a purse, and as if in the
act of pulling in a net. This a very early exemplar of Greek Netting.
[562] Cf. the rod of Heracles on a black-figured vase published by C.
Lenormant and J. de Witte, _Élite des Monuments Céramographiques_, Vol.
III., Plate 14. The Rod is 8 cm. and the Line is 6 cm.
[563] _Od._, 12, 251. Cf. the same phrase in _Od._, 10, 293, for
Circe’s magic wand.
[564] Plutarch, _de Sol._, 24, commends those of a stallion as longest
and strongest, of a gelding next, and of a mare least, because of the
weakness of the hairs due to her urination.
[565] Ælian, _N. H._, XII. 43. See Introduction.
[566] Plutarch, _de Sol._, 24.
[567] It is of great interest to note that according to Langdon (see
Jewish Chapter), probably in Sumerian, and certainly in Hebrew, the
word equalling hook, in its primary sense equals thorn, which strongly
suggests, if it do not absolutely prove, that the ancients employed,
as do even now the catchers of flat fish in Essex, and the Indians in
Arizona, a thorn as their primitive hook. In Latin _hamus_ signifies
hook and thorn. Cf. Ovid (_Nux._, 113-116).
[568] Waldstein and Shoobridge, _Herculaneum_ (London, 1908), p. 95,
“The only industry which has left much trace is fishing; hooks, cords,
floats, and nets were found in much abundance.”
[569] See _antea_, p. 157, and note 1. According to Petrie, _Tools and
Weapons_ (London, 1917), p. 37 f.: “The European fish-hooks do not
appear before the _fonderia_ age: in Greece and Roman Italy hooks are
common.” G. Lafaye, in Daremberg and Saglio, _op. cit._, III. 8. _s.v._
“hamus,” gives figure 3696, a simple bronze hook, figure 3697, a small
double hook in the Museum at Naples, figure 3698, a quadruple hook
(four bronze barbs attached to the angles of a square plate of lead),
and figure 3699, a bronze _hamus catenatus_. H. B. Walters—_Catalogue
of the Bronzes, Greek, Roman, and Etruscan in British Museum_ (London,
1899), Nos. 38 and 39—describes, but does not figure, two hooks of
the Mycenæan period from Rhodes, 2 inches and 27/8 inches long, which
are dated about 1450 B.C. Petrie, _loc. cit._, states that the “usual
pattern of the Greek-Romans is, as figured in No. 100, while 101 and
102 are the limits of size.”
[570] _Op. cit._, Pl. 378.
[571] Bk. II. 556.
[572] Bk. III. 138-148.
[573] Ovid, _Hal._, 38 f.; cf. Oppian, III. 482 ff.
[574] Pliny, _N. H._, XXXII. 5; Ovid, _Hal._, 44 ff.; Plutarch, _De
Sol. Anim._, 25. This trick is also characteristic of the _Armado_ of
the Parana river, but its enormous strength enables it also either to
jerk the paddle of the fisher away, or to capsize the boat. Cf. S.
Wright, _The Romance of the World’s Fisheries_ (London, 1908), p. 208.
[575] Pliny, IX. 67, taken _totidem verbis_ from Aristotle, _N. H._,
II. 17, and IX. 51.
[576] The fisherman on the Mosaic from the Hall of the Mystæ in Melos
(R. C. Bosanquet, in the _Jour. of Hellenic Studies_ (1898), xviii. 60
ff., Pl. 1) appears to have been using a glass bottle half-filled with
wine as a lure. The inscription ΜΟΝΟΝ ΜΗ ΥΔΩΡ is generally taken to be
late Greek for “Everything here except water” (which will be supplied
by the next rainfall). But the words might be legitimately rendered:
“Only let no water be used”—a natural exclamation from the devotees of
the wine-god! Prof. Bosanquet, despite his fine sense of humour, has
missed the _double entendre_.
[577] For the poisoning of the Tunny, cf. Aristot., _N. H._, VIII.
Cakes made of cyclamen and clay were let down near the lurking places
of the fish, according to Oppian.
[578] With one method of fishing the ancients (in common with nearly
all the moderns) were unfamiliar. The _locus_ is off Catalina Island,
etc.: the _modus_ is by kites with line and bait attached, to which
last, moving over and on the surface of the water, the Tuna seems
irresistibly attracted. See _antea_, p. 41, note 3.
[579] Cf. Apostolides, _op. cit._, p. 31.
[580] Bk. IV. 308 ff. Cf. Ælian, I. 23.
[581] Cf. Oppian, IV. 375 ff. I. Walton, citing the _Sargus_ as an
example of “the lustful fish,” quotes Dubartas, “because none can
express it better than he does,” whose last two lines, as examples of
this perfect expression, I cannot resist,
“Goes courting She-Goats on the grassie shore
Horning their husbands, that had horns before.”
[582] But in confirmation of “this statement of Ælian,” Badham, had
he taken the trouble, could have found several others by that and
other authors. Thus Ælian, XVII. 18, of the Sea-roach. _Ibid._, VI.
31, of the Crab, which on hearing the flute and singing would not
only quit the sea, but follow the retreating singer to dry land, and
capture! Ælian, VI. 32, of the _Thrissa_ states that it was caught by
singing to it, and by the noise of shell clappers which induced the
fish to dance itself into the Nets and boats. Cf. also Athenæus, VII.
137, where the _Trichias_ is so delighted with singing and dancing,
that when it hears music it leaps out of the sea and is enticed on
land! Cf. also Herodotus, I. 141, for the story of Cyrus likening
the Ionians to dancing fish. Not only were there fish that delighted
in music and singing, like the dolphin (Pliny, IX. 8, musicæ arti,
mulcetur symphoniæ cantu, sed præcipue hydrauli sono), but according to
Philostephanus there were others, that themselves made music, like the
_Poeciliæ_, who “sang like thrushes” (cf. Pliny, XI. 112). Of singing
fish Pausanias, VIII. 21. 2, says, “among the fish in the Aroanius are
the so-called spotted fish: they say that they sing like a thrush. I
saw them after they were caught, but I did not hear them utter a sound,
though I tarried by the river till sunset, when they were said to sing
most.”
[583] The head of the ox was Thor’s bait when fishing for the monstrous
Midhgardh serpent. See D. P. Chantepie de la Saussaye, _The Religion
of the Teutons_ (Boston, 1902), p. 242. C. A. Parker, _The Ancient
Crosses of Gosforth, Cumberland_ (London, 1896), p. 74 ff., describes
and figures a relief representing Thor’s fishing. In this we see the
line (below the boat) with an ox’s head, surrounding which are several
enormous fishes.
[584] For ἔρμα, “support,” perhaps we should read ἔρυμα, “protection,”
_i.e._ against erosion.
[585] See _Forest and Stream_, Nov. 7, 1914.
[586] The shark finds great favour among the negroes; “you can swallow
him in de dark,” is a commendation based on the absence of small tricky
bones, such as the shad’s. But to the best black _gourmets_, the fish
only attains its highest perfection in soup, after being buried for
two weeks! The cook of the friend with whom I was staying in Jamaica
only consented to cutting up my shark, on condition that if a gold
watch was found in its belly, that was to be her perquisite—a condition
postulated, I eventually discovered, because on a similar occasion one
hundred years before, her grandmother _did_ discover a gold watch. Alas
for her! two ship-bolts of iron were her only treasure-trove.
[587] _N. H._, VI. 13.
[588] _De Anim._, VIII. 3, p. 262.
[589] Theodore Gill, “The Remarkable Story of a Greek Fish,”
_Washington Univ. Bull._, Jan. 1907, pp 5-15.
[590] _N. H._, VI. 13.
[591] XIV. 8.
[592] _Hal._, IV. 450 ff.
[593] “Bobbing for eels,” with a bunch of worms on worsted is of like
principle, but lacks the pneumatic touch. The eels seem to get their
teeth caught in the worsted, and are pulled out before they can let
go. See _antea_, p. 42, for the _garfish_ of the Solomon Islands being
caught from a kite by a _hookless_ spider’s web.
[594] _Equites_, 864 ff.
[595] Fishing by “stirring up the mud,” is known in India. The agents
employed for the trampling in the pools are elephants ranged in close
order: the beasts enter thoroughly into the sport. Cf. G. P. Sanderson,
_Thirteen Years among the Wild Beasts in India_.
[596] Herodotus, II. 72, who states that it was sacred to the Nile.
[597] Ælian, VIII. 4; Plutarch, _Mor._, 976A. See Chapter XVI. _ante_.
[598] Athenæus, VII. 50.
[599] Antiphan., _Lykon frag._ 1, 1 ff., _ap._ Athen., 755.
[600] Anaxandr., Πόλεις, _frag._ 1, 5 f.; _ap._ Athen., 7, 55.
[601] Contrast with the Greeks and Romans the abstention from the
_Murænidæ_ by the Egyptians, Jews, Mussulmans, and Highlanders; in
the case of the last, however, the abstention was due to no religious
injunction but to physical loathing.
Fuller on the derivation of the Isle of Ely is too quaint to omit:
“When the priests of this part of the country would still retain their
wives in spite of what Pope and monks could do to the contrary, their
wives and children were miraculously turned into eels, whence it had
the name of Ely. I consider it a lie.” That Ely is derived from the
abundance of Eels taken there has the ancient authority of _Liber
Eliensis_ (II. 53). J. B. Johnston, _The Place-Names of England and
Wales_ (London, 1915), p. 250, takes _Ely_ to mean the “eel-island.” He
adds, however, that Skeat regarded _Elge_, Bede’s spelling of the name,
as “eel-region,” the second element in the compound, _ge_, being a very
rare and early Old English word for “district” (cf. German, _Gau_).
Isaac Taylor, _Names and Histories_ (London, 1896), _s.v._ Ely, states
that rents were there paid in Eels.
[602] Care must be taken to distinguish between the Eel, ἔγχελυς,
of the Greeks, _Anguilla_ of the Romans, and the so-called Lamprey,
μύραινα, or _Muræna_. Although both belong to the large family of
_Murænidæ_, the _Muræna_ is usually a much smaller fish, seldom over
2½ feet long. In shape and general appearance it closely resembles the
Eel, but can be differentiated by its teeth and certain spots over the
body. It becomes very corpulent, so much so that in late life it is
unable to keep its back under water: it is easier to flay, and whiter
of flesh than its relative. Apart from its mating with the viper, and
its tendency (_teste_ Columella) to go mad, its chief characteristics
are greed and fierceness of attack. The second book of Oppian has two
really spirited pictures of its fight with, and conquest of, the Cuttle
fish, and of its rush at, but eventual defeat by, the Lobster. At
Athens the Eel, at Rome the Muræna, was the favourite.
[603] Menand., Μέθη, _frag._ I. 11 ff., _ap._ Athen., 8, 67.
[604] Archestratos, _ap._ Athen., 7, 53.
[605] Eubul., _Echo._, _frag._ 1, 1 f., _ap._ Athen. 7, 56.
[606] Aristoph., _Ach._, 883. See F. M. Blaydes’s note on 880 ff.
[607] Eubul., _Ion_, _frag._ 2, 3 f., _ap._ Athen., 7, 56.
[608] Aristoph., _Ach._, 894. _Pax_, 1014.
[609] Bk. 7, 53.
[610] Bk. VII. 53.
[611] Philetær., _Oinopion, frag._ 1, 4 _ap._ Athen., 7, 12.
[612] Badham, _op. cit._, 392.
[613] Athenæus, XII. 15 and 20. If the fish found favour helluously,
medically condemnation attended it. Hippocrates warns against its
use; Seneca, _Nat. Qu._, III. 19, 3, terms it “gravis cibus.” If to
the gastronomic virtues of the _Murænidæ_ both Greeks and Latins were
more than kind, to other characteristics they were far indeed from
blind—_e.g._ their slipperiness, etc., was proverbial. See Lucian,
_Anach._, I, and Plautus, _Pseud._, II. 4, 57. Further, did the fish
but hap in a dream, then good-bye to all hopes and desires, which
slipped away, as surely as Alice’s “slithy toves did gyre and gimble
in the wabe.” See Artemidorus, _Oneirocritica_, II. 14. The phallic
character of the fish prevalent in ancient times continues in modern
Italy, _e.g._ the proverbs (1) about holding an Eel by his tail, and
(2) that when it has taken the hook, it must go where it is drawn. De
Gubernatis, _op. cit._, II. 341.
[614] For the many classical theories on Eel procreation see Schneider,
_op. cit._, pp. 36 ff.
[615] Aristotle, _H. A._, IV. 11.
[616] Pliny, IX. 23 and 74, and X. 87. In IX. 38 he asserts that Eels
alone of all fish do not float when dead. Aristotle, who (_N. H._,
VIII. 2) is, as usual, his authority, confines himself to noting this
characteristic as not possessed “by the majority of fish,” and accounts
for it by the smallness of stomach, lack of water in it, and want of
fat; he states, however, that when fat they do float.
[617] Accuracy as to procreation was not Father Izaak’s strong point,
as his theory that pike were bred from pickerel weed shows. It was on
this point that Richard Franck, author of _Northern Memoirs_ (written
in 1658, but unpublished till 1694), with the invincible contempt of
the fly-fisher for the bait-fisher, so jumped on Walton, that “he
huffed away.” See Sir H. Maxwell, _op. cit._, IV. 123.
[618] Robinson, _op. cit._, 73. This seems a bit of bogus mythology.
Perhaps Natalis Comes may be responsible.
[619] It is curious to find that a similar belief was held in Sardinia:
according to Jacoby, the water beetle (_Dytiscus roeselii_) is there
believed to be the progenitor of the Eel, and is accordingly called the
“Mother of the Eels” (Turrell, _op. cit._, p. 37).
[620] _Migrations of Fishes_, London, 1916.
[621] J. Schmidt found the youngest known stages of _Leptocephalus_,
the larval stage of eels, to the west of the Azores, where the water is
over 2000 fathoms deep: they were one-third of an inch in length and so
were probably not long hatched.
[622] It is believed that no Eels return to the rivers, and that they
die not long after procreation. “They commence the long journey, which
ends in maturity, reproduction, and death.” _Presidential Address_,
British Association, Cardiff, 1920.
[623] There is in the Natural History Museum at South Kensington an
excellent collection of specimens, illustrative of the development of
the Eel.